2. But there mingled with these primitive Accadians a Semitic race, and gradually transformed them, so that the speech of the country changed from being a Turanian or agglutinative, to being a Semitic and inflected language. Now, these Semitic people are probably the Chaldæans of the Bible; at any rate the Bible seems to take no account of the primitive Turanian stock. Its Chaldæans are a people allied by nationality to the Shemites, though perhaps so far mixed with an earlier stock as to be what we may call proto-Semitic. Here is the second element of confusion, a confusion between the unchanged land of Chaldæa and the two races who in succession inhabited it. 3. Finally, the language of the Semitic (or proto-Semitic) Chaldæans was practically the same as that of the people who rose into a nation in Upper Mesopotamia, viz. the Assyrians. The Assyrians, as is said in Chapter V., founded an empire which overthrew the ancient Chaldæan or Babylonian empire,--for from its largest town the empire is also called the Babylonian--and was in its turn overthrown by an alliance between the revolted Babylon and the King of Media. The third element of confusion then arises from applying to the language of the Semitic Chaldæans the name Assyrian, which involves no participation in the empire of the Assyrians. It is probable that these elements of confusion have not always been avoided in the preceding chapters. But with the aid of this note they will no longer present difficulties to the reader. It will be seen that both the Egyptians and Chaldæans of Genesis, chap. x., are a Semitic people so far as regards the character of their language, and belong in the main to the white race. So far as regards their ethnic character, they were probably more mixed than the peoples (Hebrews, Assyrians proper, etc.) who are called the children of Shem, and therefore we may call them proto-Semitic. The term Hamitic is altogether misleading, and had better be unused in ethnical classifications. The real meaning, if we follow the intention of its use in the Bible, is to distinguish from the purer Semites (Hebrews, Moabites, etc.) what we may call the proto-Semites; that is, a number of races, such as the Egyptians and Chaldæans, as well as the Canaanites generally, who spoke Semitic languages, but were very probably of impure blood, very likely of Semitic and Turanian intermixture. If the word Hamitic be used to include the rest of the inhabitants of the world who were not Semitic or Aryan, then, though it will not be very useful, no objection can be taken to its employment. But in that case we shall be obliged, forming our classification by the known rather than by the unknown, to include the Canaanites (who spoke Semitic languages) in the Semitic family; and this will be in direct contradiction to the use of Hamitic in the Bible narrative. CHAPTERS VI. AND VII.